


The Dark's Deceiving

by Qpenguin98



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Amnesty, Crying, Dissociation, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Shock, TAZ Amnesty, Trauma, i guess, i mean thats what that was, that in between scene for ep 14 we didnt get
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-25
Updated: 2018-08-25
Packaged: 2019-07-02 06:41:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,440
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15791064
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Qpenguin98/pseuds/Qpenguin98
Summary: "Aubrey watches the Pizza Hut sign fall straight onto the grocery store and it’s all she can do to stay upright."The between time that we didn't get to see in Ep. 14.





	The Dark's Deceiving

Aubrey watches the Pizza Hut sign fall straight onto the grocery store and it’s all she can do to stay upright. She manages, for a while. The sound is awful, electrical wires snapping, sparks crackling, the creak and break of the wood as it collapses. The sign is only halfway in right now, but it shifts a bit, sending what sounds like more debris falling onto the store. It flickers back on, lighting up. From her end she can see the tail end of “ZA T,” mocking her.

She just made that premonition happen. She just caused the sign to fall straight onto that building. Her magic fucked up so bad. She thought she had it, her emotions were good and high, but she guesses it doesn’t matter.

Duck was in there.

Duck’s still in there, she tells herself, and her chest feels tight. Something she purposefully hasn’t thought about in a long time dredges up to the front of her brain.

Mom.

Mom died in a fire that started on the second floor, but the robbers never made it there. She passed out and the house burned down and mom died because of it.

It’s always been there in the back of her mind, taunting her. An answer that couldn’t possibly make sense. But now she knows she has magic, and she knows she specializes in fire right now, and she was completely out of control then.

Aubrey killed her mom.

“Not again,” she feels herself say, and her face feels wet, but everything is so far away. Duck’s in there. She just killed Duck. She killed her friend. Oh god. Oh _god._ Her knees feel cold in a distant kind of way, and she’s looking up more now, but she doesn’t care why that would be.

There’s a lot of noise happening but she can’t parse out any details, stuck staring at the flickering half of the sign. And then suddenly it isn’t there anymore and there’s just dark night sky over the ruined remains of the grocery store roof.  She should care about why that is, but all she can think about is the fact that she just killed her friend, one of the people she knows best in this town, someone she’s grown closer to over these months of training and fighting monsters together.

And her mom, her wonderful mom who she loved and who lover her right back and always did her best to be the most supportive person in her life. She killed her. She killed her mom. She killed her mom, and one of her best friends. Who else? How many more times is she going to let her magic go out of control and kill someone she cares about?

“-id you knock over the sign?” makes its way into her ears, and that voice is so familiar but she can’t place it and everything feels so far away and she has no idea what’s happening.

“ _Aubrey_ ,” comes more forcefully and she shivers back into herself a bit.

“Killed Duck,” she murmurs, now staring at the snow. When did she get on the ground?

“N- what?”

She repeats herself, voice as numb as she feels right now. Is she feeling anything? She thinks she should be, she just killed someone. She just made her friend die. She killed her mom. She killed Duck.

The talking peters out again and she’s alone. Everything’s so cold. Duck’s dead. Fuck. Oh god. What is she even supposed to tell anyone?

“Hey, Aubrey I’m not dead. Look!” And that voice sounds suspiciously like Duck, but thatcan’t be right, she just killed him.

“No no no, not again, no,” says her mouth, but she’s got no input on the words she’s making.

“Nah nah nah Aubrey look, I’m not dead. God, um, hold on.” The voice leaves again, farther away, and everything’s kind of narrowed to where her knees are sitting in the snow, water seeping in through her jeans.

Something crinkly wraps around her shoulders and she jerks back into herself a bit. She looks up a bit and finds Duck kneeling in front of her, hands on her shoulders. But that can’t be Duck because she just killed him. She just killed him. She just _killed him_.

Sirens float into Aubrey’s ears and she’s hit with the idea that she’ll have to explain herself, explain how she made the sign fall, why she made the sign fall, how exactly she killed everyone inside of that shop. Vaguely she wonders where Ned is.

“Aw shit,” the person in front of her says, standing up. “Fuck, that’s where he is.”

The Duck who is not Duck runs off in the direction of the sign, and she spots a body there in the snow, a facedown lump being tended to by EMTs. An unfamiliar hand settles on her shoulder and she jumps away from it. The woman puts her hands up, eyebrows furrowed.

“Did you get hurt, honey? What’s the matter?”

“I… Duck?”

“He’s over there, he’s alright. Little scraped up but nothing to serious I don’t think,” she says, and Aubrey can’t even fathom how that could be true. But Leo Tarkesian is standing a few feet away, staring at the remains of his grocery store and he was still inside, so maybe, just maybe she’s right.

“I… I don’t… I’m okay. I didn’t- I wasn’t in the shop. I’m fine.” She can’t stop talking, but she has a better handle over her words now. Everything still feels too far away and when the woman’s hand settles on her pulse point and feels at her face, she can’t even feel it.

“Shock,” she says to the person behind her. Words fizzle out again and she pulls the blanket tight around herself, willing the distant stinging of her eyes to go away. The woman pulls her up and says something to her and Aubrey nods her head along, hoping that’s what she wants. She frowns and says something to the other EMT, pulling her towards the ambulance.

The facedown body is now on a stretcher, wheeled quickly to that same ambulance. She recognizes Ned, and she feels rooted in place. He got hurt too. Her fuck up hurt him too. He looks bad. She’s killing both of her friends tonight, it seems.

The woman pulls her gently but she can’t move. Words are being said and everything is fast paced and over her head. She calls over her shoulder and Duck who can’t be Duck but she hopes to any god listening that it is comes into her line of sight again.

He says something to her that she can’t understand and then frowns. Then he grabs her by the arms and pulls her forward and it’s such a shock that she can move or own body that she forgets about the fact that Duck should be dead and that Ned is dying in the back of an ambulance and lets him drag her onto the truck and sit at the sidelines.

Aubrey never understood medical stuff so she just stares as they start patching Ned up. Duck is right next to her, Mr. Tarkesian on his other side. Time moves in slow motion and she sits, motionless, through it all. Her brain is stuck on the fact that Duck is upright, alive next to her. It makes no sense, but she doesn’t want to question it for fear of having it dragged away from her.

The hospital ushers Ned away for treatment immediately and Aubrey, Duck, and Mr. Tarkesian are taken into a different room and looked over. She tries very hard to listen to what they say about Duck but she can’t understand anything. Her chest feels heavy and her eyes ache and everything kind of sucks.

A nurse puts an oxygen mask over her face and then she’s in the present, slapping it off of herself forcefully.

“No,” she says roughly. “No, no no no no.”

“Ms. Little, please,” the nurse says, trying to put it back on her. “You’re still in shock. We need to keep you properly oxygenated and you might need an IV for some fluids.”

“Don’t touch me,” she feels herself say, shoving away at the hands around her face. “Don’t touch me!”

She tamps down the small swell of magic she feels. She won’t hurt anyone else tonight. She can’t hurt anyone else tonight.

“Hey, whoa, Aubrey it’s okay,” Duck says. “She’s just tryin’ to help you out here. Honestly your breathing sounds a little funny so I think she’s probably right about you needing the oxygen mask, yeah? We’d probably be fine with water just in a glass, though. Don’t think she needs to be poked up right now.”

She quiets herself down. Duck’s okay. Duck’s trying to make sure that she’s okay, which is ridiculous considering she almost just killed him. But she doesn’t fight the oxygen mask getting placed around her head this time, allows the strap to fit snuggly into her head and cool oxygen floods her face.

“There we go,” the nurse says, sounding relieved. “Alright, all of you seem fine to me, other than the shock and a couple scrapes and bruises. I’m gonna let you rest up in here while we tend to your friend, alright?”

“Sounds good,” Duck says. “Hey, you know where we could get some water around here?”

“I can bring in a couple bottles,” the nurse assures him before leaving. She brings them back quickly, or Aubrey’s losing the time again, and presses one into her hands.

She pulls the mask up and takes a few gulping drinks. Duck opens his own bottle and drinks from it a little less desperately and she begrudgingly replaces the mask when she’s done. She floats for a while, coming back to her mom in the dead space. Mr. Tarkesian and Duck talk a bit, but it’s mostly quiet. There’s some phone calls and nurses in and out, checking on her to make sure she’s not going to completely lose it, but she’s still so numb to everything.

Mom is dead because of her. Dad’s all alone because she left at the soonest possible moment after everything, not able to stomach the thought of sticking around to deal with the guilt and the fear and the sadness. She didn’t go to the funeral, gone the night after.

“I’m gonna step out and get some air,” Mr. Tarkesian says after a while. Aubrey doesn’t know how long it’s been, but it feels like seconds. Hours, she thinks. There’s been too many nurse visits for it to have been less.

She doesn’t know she’s holding everything in until he closes the door behind him and she promptly bursts into tears.

“Shit,” she hears Duck say, coming over in front of her. She wrestles the mask of herself, throwing it away. It clatters onto the linoleum floor and she buries her head in her hands.

“Aubrey,” he says, sounding unsure of himself. “It’s okay! We’re okay. Ned’s gonna be fine, you don’t gotta worry. I’m okay. We’re all okay.”

“I’m sorry,” she wobbles out. The blanket falls off her shoulders and crinkles around her hips. “I’m sorry, fuck Duck, I’m _sorry_. I thought it would work but it slipped and I fucked it up and everyone got hurt and I thought I killed you.”

She sobs into her palms, loud gasping ugly noises that she can’t control. Her lungs are spasming in her chest and maybe she needs that oxygen mask after all, but she just hiccups into her hands, body hunched up.

“You didn’t, though. You didn’t kill me and I’m right here in front of you now. Look at me?”

She peeks through her fingers and finds him crouched down in front of her once more, arms braced on his knees.

“See?” He says, giving her a shaky smile. “I’m great. I’m kicking at high velocity. Look at me, ready and raring to go. You barely even got me scratched up.”

Aubrey wants her mom, wants her warm arms wrapped around her and the soft scent of tangerines that she always had, the gentle hum of her voice when she spoke, the kind of crooked teeth that she never bothered to get fixed. She can’t have any of that because her mom is dead. She doesn’t deserve any of that because she killed her. She buries her face again and cries some more.

“Ah, fuck. I’m not really the greatest at this, but…” unsure arms wrap around her, pulling her loosely closer. He’s not really all that warm, and he smells like cold soup and his voice is low and kind of rough, but he’s hugging her, not tight, but it’s pressure enough for her to feel comforted.

She doesn’t sink out of the chair but she does lean forward, wrapping her arms around him and pressing her face into his shoulder. Her face is wet and disgusting, but Duck’s shirt already has split open canned soup on it so she can’t really bring herself to are all that much. Duck doesn’t do much but be there, holding her loosely while she cries herself out, but it’s enough pressure and comfort for her to feel herself again.

“’m sorry,” she says into his shirt.

“It’s fine, Aubrey. I’m okay. Ned’s gonna be fine. We both made a stupid decision about hitting the sign to get it to move, but it worked and I’m not dead and neither is he or anyone else in Leo’s store, so we’re good. We’re fine. Nothing went unfixably wrong.”

She nods and goes quiet, crying silently until the tears stop. Duck grabs her a tissue from the counter and she wipes at her face, drying it. She’s breathing fine now and her brain is much less foggy, so she picks up the mask and hangs it up where she thinks it might go.

They wait together, and Mr. Tarkesian comes back, and then they wait some more before getting the stable label for Ned. It’s a breath of relief. They get to wait in Ned’s room, though Mr. Tarkesian opts to wait in the hall. Mama comes, eventually, and the steady sight of her clams Aubrey down even more.

They’ll have to deal with this, she thinks. She’ll have to deal with this. She can’t let her magic get the better of her. She just can’t. This was way too close of a call.

She settles in next to Duck and waits for Ned to wake up, listens to the idle chatter of the room, and lets herself feel real.

**Author's Note:**

> Travis McElroy handed me a GIFT today  
> but really, im working on other stuff but this ep was so good and aubrey was really good in it and i just wanted her thoughts for the whole thing so i wrote it  
> its short and made quickly but im really digging amnesty and i hope yall are too


End file.
